Ticketstumbler (YC summer 08) "growing 50 percent a month"
masshightech.com
masshightech.com
To clarify:
-We've never said that we'll never take money. In an ideal situation, startups would not have to take money and if we can get away with it great, if not that's okay. We're well aware that the odds are against us on this one.
-We've been very open with this with our potential investors. The sharp money is still investing in this economy and luckily some of them are still interested in us. You think a VC will argue with you when you say you want more months of operational information so you can make a better informed, data-driven decision? Nada. I've talked to four potential investors this week alone.
-Due to the economy, sales have stayed relatively flat as average sales have gone down while volume has gone up. However, we're still working out bugs and have over $1 billion worth of tickets on the site. Most people don't even know we have concert tickets yet, which is by design. We'll be chasing more PR soon, which will hopefully lead to real salaries for myself and Tom.
-We don't have a model, a deck, a pitch book or executive summary. We'll make them on demand if they are ever needed. If you want to do it right, it's a very time consuming process. In the short term we thought it was a better use of our time to talk to our users (I respond to literally every non-form letter email), create content, develop and sell.
-Obviously models can reflect growth rates. My point was: when you are growing quickly in the early stages, by the time you get to the final boardroom meeting, everything can very easily be out of date. This is especially true when you haven't spent any money on advertising.
-Month over month traffic is up 67% as of today. This is largely due to Obama Tickets, more pages being indexed, SEO and good ol Google.
-I haven't had a haircut since I quit my job. \m/
Edit: Of course as I write this our contact page is down. We're on it.
Edit 2: It's back up.
Here's what I actually look like:
Here's what PG actually looks like:
http://danhau.posterous.com/our-fearless-investor-paul-gra
Here's an older picture of Livingston, but she still looks the same...adorable:
Remember earlier when we talked about why all these layoffs didn't happen earlier if the people getting laid off truly weren't needed?
Yeah well...
I'll write about everything once we're further down the line.
Usually she hugs you while you're down.
Cheers!
Things are/were pretty close though. If we would have moved to SF, bye bye profitability. That's one of the main reasons we're in Boston.
Wait, are you saying you'll actually sell $2 billion worth of tickets, or just offer them for sale?
Shit man, if we had $2 million in sales already I'd be on an island somewhere. It'd be 99% profit.
Your best bet is probably to focus on ways to differentiate Ticketstumbler. For example, what reasons are there for me to buy a ticket through Ticketstumbler than from any other source? Etc.
The real value in Kayak wasn't that it included the big airlines, it was that it includes Southwest (not included anywhere else), Frontier, Airtran and many long tail airlines and forces the big airlines to compete. I traveled 250k miles in the past two years and often found myself on no-name airline flights that I would have never heard of if it wasn't for Kayak. And it has a super clean UI, isn't spammy and doesn't charge fees.
Our value is/will be: clean UI, no TicketStumbler fees (we're free!), no Ads on the main site, simple to use, natural language search and user dashboards & interactive maps (both coming soon).
Yeah, that's true. What I'm saying is, that by itself isn't enough to be successful. Because of your next point, actually:
I traveled 250k miles in the past two years and often found myself on no-name airline flights that I would have never heard of if it wasn't for Kayak.
That example is a very different from a preppy highschooler buying a ticket to a concert. For one, you had to travel. If all of a sudden there weren't any airplanes, it would still be necessary for you to travel. But it's not necessary for people to go to concerts.
Also, consider the number one reason why people go to concerts: because their friends are going. So one way to differentiate yourself from the competition might be to offer group discounts, for example. You could even sell them at a loss for awhile, just so you can use that as a way to market Ticketstumbler. Like "Going out tonight? Stumble into your next concert with Ticketstumbler. The more friends you bring, the more cash you'll save."
What I'm saying is, try not to hyperfocus on making Ticketstumbler like Kayak. It isn't, and can't be. So those types of comparisons are a good way to communicate to someone about what Tickestumbler does, but are a bad design way to design the company.
Not true. 100k of those miles were done for personal stuff (family, friends, vaca, etc).
The number one reason people go to concerts is because they like music, but I see what you're saying. The challenge isn't just helping people find friends to go with, it's helping them find music to listen to and making them aware when their favorite bands are in town.
The aforementioned user dashboards and interactive maps will eventually have everything else you mentioned.
We've never "hyperfocused" on making TicketStumbler like Kayak, which is why we have four blogs, a news site, directory listings (not just search), a video site and are much more open about what we do than Kayak. Also, one of our next projects will be completely out of left field (as to how we relate to Kayak). I think you really get what we're trying to do though so thanks a lot for your feedback. If you have anymore suggestions my email is in my profile.
Yeah, people go to concerts to listen to good music. But in the same way you don't typically go to a bar just to get drunk, people don't typically go to a concert just for the music. Socializing with friends is a very strong force that compels people to actually drop $50+ on a concert ticket.
Also, it probably won't be beneficial to try to help find new friends for people to go with. IMO, it would be kind of creepy to stand next to a total stranger for an hour if it "felt like" we should be talking and getting to know each other. :)
I just didn't want people to think we'd never ever take money. For angel funding you often don't need a model and sometimes don't need a deck. Rest of the article was great (even if the picture was a bit embarassing :-D). The other clarification points were for the Hacker News headline (I didn't want people to think revenue or profits were growing 50% per month), the picture (ha) and to expand on points made within the article.
Nothing tops this picture, however: http://is.gd/7yx4 (This one was at Tom's expense instead of mine)